They are sour, said the fox about the grapes. 🙄
You tax the cash-value of the giftcard. In this case, the case value of the gift is specified by apple to be 1/100 of a dollar (i.e. 1 cent). Yes, he will have to pay taxes... on one cent (or worst case on 100 dollars, if they count it as 1 cent per dollar)
At worst he will pay 14 dollars for a 10,000 dollar gift card. Not too shabby. That is front-page on slickdeals.net for sure 🙂
Unfortunately this scenario is not true. What happens is you get a nice little paper next year around tax time that will says $10,000 income from apple. (wont say those exact words..but you get my drift).
You list that as regular income and there you go.
One thing you can do..is search around and see if you can technically buy that same product ($10,000 itunes gift card) for less less than $10,000. (highly doubtful). Your scenario is the equivalent of saying well i received a check from someone and the paper costs a penny to make, so I list my income as a penny but still get to cash the check. hahaha nice try.
btw slickdeals.net isnt exactly the best place for tax info...
Another option would be to:
Go to ebay and sell it for $8000.
You will end up paying $2500-$3000 in taxes for initial receiving it, but you can get $8,000 from ebay buyer (which you wont be taxed on if you claim you aren't in the business of selling on ebay). The buyer will also save $2000, and not get taxed for the 10,000 gift card.
This method is not common, but this is one way you see $500 -$1000 gift cards on sale for $700-$800. People sometimes win stacks of these gift cards that equal to quite a lot of money. yes yes, i know there are alot of frauds doing it, but there are also legal gift card sales that seem too good to be true on ebay (probably far and few in between). You be shocked at the number of ways to win stacks of random walmart gift cards.